Review by Booklist Review
Caputo, celebrated author of the classic Vietnam memoir A Rumor of War (1977) as well as fiction, most recently the novel Some Rise by Sin (2017), knows something about combat and violence and the devastating toll it takes. The setting here is the vividly rendered Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but the battlefield nonetheless remains that of men's souls. While most of the tales involve hunting, Caputo has bigger game in his sights: a study of man versus nature as metaphor for man versus human nature. Both are red in tooth and claw. The linked stories introduce a cast of memorable, three-dimensional, recurring characters, but it is the larger themes of love and sacrifice and the fraught bonds of male relationships that provide the real connective tissue. Caputo expertly crafts his psychologically astute narratives to explore how fathers and sons, combat veterans, and old high-school pals attempt to navigate their own subtly complex emotional terrain to find peace, forgiveness, and hope. As in every battle, some survive and some do not, but Caputo does suggest, at the end, that healing is possible.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Pulitzer Prize-winning, deeply respected Caputo is always a big draw.--Bill Kelly Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Caputo (Some Rise by Sin) probes violent masculinity and intergenerational conflicts, largely against the severe backdrop of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, in this decent but repetitive collection of interlinked stories. Father and sons quarrel viciously in "Grief," in which a middle-aged Jeffery Havlicek brings his possibly senile father, Hal, on a hunting trip following Hal's wife's death, and in "The Nature of Love on the Last Frontier," in which Paul's frustrations with Trey, his impetuous son, evaporate in melodramatic brushes with disaster on a hunting trip in Alaska. Haunted Vietnam vet Will Treadwill stars in "Dreamers" as a guide to two Chicago policemen on a bear hunt. Will's temper turns a tense encounter with younger, volatile Lonnie Kidman into a brutal calamity; a similar impulse in "Lost" leads to his frightening, disoriented night in the woods. "Lines of Departure" stumbles as it veers from pillorying the do-gooders who run the retreat for veterans with PTSD where Will volunteers to honestly recounting the carnage of war. Bed-and-breakfast host Lisa Williams, the only female protagonist, outgrows her once-a-year affair with Gaetan Clyne in "The Guest." Caputo's men cloak vulnerability with callousness, but his plots replace emotional growth with the shocks of violence. This collection will appeal to readers looking for a dramatic take on masculinity, though the stories blend together by the end. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
This latest from Caputo, an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction (e.g., Some Rise by Sin) collects seven interconnected stories set on Michigan's rugged Upper Peninsula during the hunter's moon in autumn. As Vieux Desert inhabitants go about their lives, storms are brewing beneath the surface. In "Blockers," two men are called on by Bill's wife, Lisa, to look after their oldest friend, a recovering alcoholic who won't look after himself. In a later story, "The Guest," Lisa, now a widow running a local bed-and-breakfast, takes in a guest who begins a flirtatious conversation that leads to a once-a-year tryst. In "Grief," elderly Hal Havlicek, oozing discontent, goes on an ill-conceived hunting trip with his son Jeff and three friends. "Dreamers" sees Will Treadwell, a local microbrewery owner, leading two hunters on a bear shoot with bow and arrow, but they are disrupted by a troublemaker from town. Combat correspondent Phil joins Will to volunteer at a veterans' treatment center in "Lines of Departure," but despite Phil's experience a stargazing trip ends with mixed success. VERDICT Superb storyteller Caputo offers a tapestry weaving the friendships, losses, and past mistakes of ordinary people. Readers of literary fiction will not be disappointed in this first-rate collection.-Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Seven linked stories explore aspects of contemporary manhood.Though all but one are set in a small corner of Michigan's remote, rugged Upper Peninsula, the seven stories that compose this collection are anything but claustrophobic. Probing deeply into the male psyche, Caputo (Some Rise by Sin, 2017, etc.) confidently tackles subjects that include the sometimes-catastrophic price of failure, the relations between fathers and sons, and the emotional battles faced by returning combat veterans. While hunting figures prominently in most of the storieslike "Blockers," in which three high school friends reunite on a fateful weeklong bird-hunting trip, or "The Nature of Love on the Last Frontier," set in the Alaskan bush as a father and son lock horns in a tense generational conflict that turns life-threateningeven readers unfamiliar with that pursuit will find themselves immersed in Caputo's fast-moving narratives. In vivid and minutely observant prose, he writes with assurance about his characters' wilderness experiences and with equal sensitivity about the captivating natural beauty that surrounds them. Will Treadwell, a Vietnam veteran and one-time owner of a popular local brewpub, appears in five of the stories, including "Dreamers," which is built around an incident of frightening violence, and "Lost," an understated evocation of the terror of accidental isolation in the unforgiving forest. His recurring presence is a quietly effective linking device. "The Guest," a portrait of an episodic middle-age affair and the only story with a female protagonist, brings back Lisa Williams from "Blockers" years after her life has been altered irrevocably by the events of the earlier story. The collection's final entry, "Lines of Departure," again features Treadwell and a narrator named Phil, whose biography bears some resemblance to Caputo's own. Unfolding at a weekend retreat for troubled veterans, it's a compassionate glimpse of how "the psychic pain of war's aftermath could be as isolating as acute physical pain" and a fitting conclusion to an intense, often unsettling journey into the male mind and heart.Expertly blending plot and character, each of these taut, propulsive tales possesses novelistic depth. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
